Alchemy Records is the Osaka-based independent label founded June 1984 by Jojo Hiroshige (Yoshiyuki Hiroshige, b. 9 September 1959, Kyoto) in partnership with the late Naoto Hayashi. The label has run continuously from founding to 2026 under Hiroshige's editorial direction; the 40-plus year operation is the sustained Kansai noise imprint and the infrastructure through which the Japanese noise tradition has documented itself.
The label's pre-history runs through Hayashi's Unbalance Records (Osaka, 1980 onward), the first real independent label in Kansai. Unbalance issued the seminal early Hijokaidan documents - the 1980 Shumatsu Shorijo split LP and the 1982 Zouroku no Kibyo first proper LP - alongside Auschwitz cassettes, Yoran, and other Kansai-scene material. When Hiroshige and Hayashi joined forces in 1984 to found Alchemy, the new imprint took on the catalogue infrastructure for what would become Japanese noise's twin sustained operation (the other being Merzbow's output across various small Tokyo imprints).
The opening Alchemy catalogue established the founding configurations. Viva Angel (1984, Hijokaidan) and the Hideshi-Hino-cover CD reissue of Zouroku no Kibyo (ARCD 008) bracket the transition from Unbalance to Alchemy. The 1985 King of Noise (Hiroshige + Toshiji Mikawa duo) gave the noise tradition the informal title it would later apply to Hijokaidan itself. By the late 1980s the catalogue had become the vehicle for the harsh-noise wing of the Kansai scene: Hanatarash's anti-music excess, Masonna's total-noise method, Incapacitants' pure-noise sustained argument, and Annon's earlier Mikawa / Hayashi collaboration.
The catalogue extends in editorial range well beyond pure harsh noise. Hiroshige's interests have routed the label through psychedelic rock (Angel'in Heavy Syrup, Yoshiko Sai reissues, Doji Morita-related material), Kansai punk and no-wave (Auschwitz, Bide & Vibrators material, Omoide Hatoba), and the X-Kaidan collaboration series that documents Hijokaidan's deliberate collisions with adjacent modes - The Stalin's Michiro Endo (Sta-Kaidan), hardcore-punks S.O.B. (SOB-Kaidan, 1988), Jun Togawa (Togawa-Kaidan), the Hatsune Miku vocaloid (Hatsune-Kaidan, 2013), and various others. The editorial breadth distinguishes Alchemy from purely-noise specialist labels and gives the catalogue something of the character of an extended Kansai underground archive.
The international partnerships have been considerable. Borbetomagus - the American free-noise saxophone trio of Don Dietrich, Jim Sauter and Donald Miller - appears in the catalogue both as a reissued archive and as direct collaborator: Both Noises End Burning (Hijokaidan and Borbetomagus, 2007) is the trans-Pacific harsh-noise summit document of the period. Canada's Nihilist Spasm Band has appeared on the catalogue; occasional Merzbow appearances continue. The label has functioned, through these partnerships, as one of the export-routes through which Japanese noise has reached the European and North American distribution networks (alongside RRRecords in Lowell, Massachusetts, and Cold Spring in Northamptonshire UK).
Hiroshige's parallel businesses have provided the editorial infrastructure around the label. Jo's Sports Cards (Tokyo and Osaka), the Alchemy Book Store (Kyoto 2000–2003), the Alchemy Music Store (Osaka 1999–2008), and the Future Days fortune-telling parlour (Osaka, opened 2009) constitute the Hiroshige operation. The Bureau notes that none of these is a digression: each routes through the same editorial sensibility that produces the label's catalogue, and Hiroshige's 1997 Noise From Trading Cards directly draws its editorial conceit from the sports-cards business.
The Bureau's editorial reading: Alchemy Records is filed at Tier I as the sustained Kansai noise imprint and one of the two anchors of the Japanese noise tradition's recorded documentation (the other being the looser Tokyo distribution that gathered around Akita's Lowest Music & Arts 1979 onward and the later ZSF Produkt 1984 onward). The 40-plus continuous years, the Hiroshige sole-editor continuity from founding to present, the Hijokaidan catalogue, the early-period Hanatarash / Masonna / Incapacitants documentation, the international Borbetomagus partnership, and the Kansai underground editorial breadth all file under the same structure. The label remains active in 2026 and continues to release new material.